An improved ACO algorithm for vehicle scheduling problem in military material distribution

The ¿distribution¿ mode for material support is the trend of military logistics evolution, and scheduling of vehicle is crucial to achieve this target. The mathematical model for the vehicle scheduling problem of military material distribution was formulated, in which the minimization of the armies´ waiting time was used as the objective, and an improved ant colony optimization algorithm was utilized to solve the model. In the proposed algorithm, the transition rule in ant colony optimization algorithm was improved, and the local search heuristics were integrated into the algorithm. The vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW) benchmark instances were solved under different parameter settings, and the experimental results showed that our improved transition rule can significantly enhance the algorithm´s performance.